SLEEPING BEAUTY

Incestuous rape understandably sends a wealthy Chicago teenager into a quarter century of celibacyuntil her passions are awakened by a kindly archaeologist and the chance to undo her malefactor. Midwestern melodrama from the husband and wife Wealth, Glamour, and Power (Inheritance, Private Affairs, A Ruling Passion) specialist team. No wicked stepmother could be more odious or evil than Anne Chatham's handsome, vile uncle Vince, who, under the noses of Anne's large, immensely wealthy but astonishingly unnoticing family, sexually enslaves the motherless child for two years until she at last denounces him at her 15th birthday dinner in 1967. Fleeing her semi-credulous relatives, Anne leaves the Chicago suburbs for Haight-Ashbury, where she pulls herself together and begins a life alone that takes her through Berkeley to Harvard Law (top marks always, of course) and on to a lucrative career dealing in L.A. divorces. But returning to Chicago for her grandfather's funeral, Anne is sucked back into the family drama. Uncle Vince, renounced by his father after Anne's accusations, is now a Denver zillionaire senator with an eye on the White House. Anne's father is losing most of his fortune in inept developments, and the younger generation of Chathams has upped stakes for Tamarack, the Aspenlike ski resort developed by grandpa. Uncle Vince is not happy to see Anne back in town. She and her unhappy memories could send his career into a tailspin. He begins a series of machinations intended to eliminate Anne and, while he's at it, to take revenge for his excommunication by wiping out the family's ski-slopes-for- the-superrich business. Meanwhile, Josh Durant, Anne's handsome, scholarly, deeply rich admirer, flies back and forth between Tamarack, where he woos the still chilly Anne and where he is accused of heinous crimes, and Luxor, Egypt, where he has discovered a deeply rich tomb with a completely intact Pharaoh and where he hopes Anne will discover her deeply buried feelings. Upmarket Harlequin. Middle-class values prevail no matter how many millions are flung about.